August 7, 2009

Ready steady rhino!

I apologise for how flaky I’ve been about blogging this week and for the greater than usual quantity of incoherent random in my posts – I’ve been high on life, 80 and piggysniffle medication. The sky’s the limit, as long as you don’t forget to cast slowfall. But I’m nudging good health again which means long days of doing nothing except playing WoW are over. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. I’ve quite enjoyed just ploughing a massive amount of time into the game without any particular feelings of guilt or shame about it, since trying to see people would be vastly antisocial (hello, lovely to see you, I’ve brought a bottle and some swine-flu) and I was too ill to be able to concentrate on doing anything remotely demanding. There has been a more marked sense of progress than I’m usually conscious of – which is compelling – but life-WoW balance is important to me.

I’ve also lost the blogsphere plot so Friday links are temporarily going to have to become Saturday links. I have a lot of reading to catch up on now my brain is semi-functional again.

A combination of hitting 80 and acquiring a guild has really transformed the game for us. Although the spanner-to-sane ratio is not as high as it could be, everyone is at least friendly and willing. And by sheer dint of being moderately competent (most of the time, well, M’Pocket tank especially, I’m, y’know, me) we’ve found ourselves in a semi-privileged, not entirely deserved position. The main advantage is that you can put together a group for pretty much anything within minutes. There are still only 3 80s, including us, but there’s a run of people in the mid 70s so currently we’re hitting Northrend instances and Outland heroics. The truly weird thing is that we’re healer heavy. I could dual-spec shadow of course but I’m kind of committed to standing at the back in a sissy robe.

I suppose I could stand at the back wreathed in purest shadow, spilling forth fel-wee to smite my enemies but… nah. It’s just not the same. Felwee.wordpress.com…. I don’t think it’s me.

Yesterday we ran BFD on our alts with a guildie and Gundrak on our 80s, and it really emphasised the differences between old world instances and Northrend instances. BFD is huge, sprawling, contains about 83 bosses (well, maybe not 83) and, hell, it’s bloody hard. We were 3-manning, at level (admittedly the guildie wasn’t entirely on the ball, in fact he was so far from the ball it’s possible he was playing checkers) and the combination of size, scope, fleeing murlocs, and large groups of casters makes it damn near lethal. And I stance-danced. I’ve never stance-danced before. I am very much a noobtank but it felt like it was some rite of passage. A hasty hamstring and then ducking back behind my shield. Now try to flee into a large group of mobs, El Murloc!

Gundrak, by contrast, is just a big wheel you walk round, looking at the exhibits on your left and right. On the other hand, whoever designed it was clearly on crack, which redeems it rather in my eyes. I think it’s tactically less interesting and significantly less demanding than BDF but it is also chockablock with rhinos.

Rhinos!

Rhinos!

And there’s the boss who turns into mammoth. Least intimidating transformation sequence ever. I shall make myself FLUFFY with CUTE LI’LL HORNS and you will tremble, oh adventurers of Azeroth. Actually he nearly did for us because I was incapacitated with laughter and therefore almost failed to heal through his mammothian foot stomp. Ironically, the footstomp came literally the second after I slashmocked so I think he was making a point.

Seriously … though … rhinos?

Also occasionally we would face not one but two Jormungar worms rhinos.

And why do you occasionally get a poison-style DoT from them? In what way are rhinos poisonous? My god, are those trolls cross breeding them with SNAKES?! The sick bastards!

By the time we reached the final boss, we’d all gone rhino-crazy, which manifested in replacing arbitrary words with the word rhino, extra points if the word originally began with ‘r’. We weren’t having readychecks, we were having rhinochecks. Is everybody rhino? Rhino! Rhino! Rhino!

Of course, Gal’darah had to join in. “You wanna see power? I’m gonna show you power!” he bellowed, promptly turning into … a … yes, you get it.

That completely finished me. I was practically crying with laughter. But somehow I managed to type: “you wanna see rhino! I’m gonna show you rhino!”

And then he impaled me on his mighty rhino horn, right in the innuendo.

Ouch.

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Everytime I read one of your dungeon stories, a huge huge part of me wants to go semi/fully pugging into uncharted lands. its a sick sick side of me, that shouldn’t be allowed to be, but i can’t wait till i get a toon at level 80 that might be a little close to getting anything out of them instances (you know, so you have something to keep telling yourself that it’s because of that, you where going in the first place.)
but we all know the thruth. PuGs give you a lot of things:
If they are good: friends, competent players
If they are bad: helping you remember just why you like your guild so very very much
and if they are really really bad: stories of legends!!

For my own sanity I should go pugging more! -or should that be: For my own Rhino perhaps?

I haven’t PUGed in a while truthfully – although not necessarily guaranteed competance, at least the guild are fun and friendly. I should probably bite the PUG bullet, simply for the crazy crazy stories🙂

We’re currently just doing normal runs (not heroics) so anybody in their mid-70s can experience rhinos for themselves.

It’s a good job there wasn’t a hunter in the party otherwise I’d have bene all “omg! hunter pet!” and we all know how that ends =P

Glad you’re feeling better (and glad you were feeling well enough to give swine flu a name like “piggysniffles” – I’m never going to be able to watch a “Swine Flu!!! ZOMG!!!” news story without giggling.)

Thank you🙂 Well, I’m convinced the reason people are in such a panic about swine-flu is the fault of the name. I mean any illness that references animals always makes you feel that you’ve got something dreadful (birdflu, mad cow disease?!). Hence piggysniffles. Giving the public a better sense of perspective🙂

How long have you got until your computer is returned to you? Rhino is a 75ish instance, I think?

MT is brutal, but awesome. I think it might be my favourite instance of all time, although the Shadow Labyrinth still holds a corner of my heart (it’s partially fear, but partially love🙂 ).

I think the virgin analogy was crazy, I’m blaming the anti-piggysniffles medication😉 But it did amuse me at the time of writing. And thanks for the kind words, I’m really happy to amuse you (especially in the tragic but temporary loss of my computer – woe, woe upon the southern house of Joe!)

Just remember, even caster DPS are still in the back in their sissy robes, and technically, the only healer class that applies to is a priest, so if you think about it, my dual speccing shadow, you’ll actually be MORE deserving of your URL.

LOL, I wanna see a pally healer who’s the opposite “I heal in tank gear” lol just for laughs, of course

I wouldn’t say Gundrak is one of our favorites, too many annoying bits I guess. Never noticed all the rhinos, it always felt to me like it was full of bones and snakes. Well, and trolls, but that goes without saying. I remember a few rhinos towards the end though. My favorite part is the optional boss you get to fight in heroic mode, but that snake boss is a bitch in heroic, so it balances out I guess.

I don’t like Gundrak much either – it’s annoying and fiddly and involves nearly getting eaten by piranhas a lot, which I could really do with out. And I HATE the snakeboss. He is difficult in a completely non-rewarding way. Gah!

Well.. that description is certainly close enough for government work. Holy has access to Circle of Healing, Discipline has imba shields, great Flash Heals and the best single-target heal in the game – Penance (or it was until The Great Priest Nerf of Patch 3.2).

Or in other words, Holy has more aoe options, Disc has more single target options. But they’re just options. Both have Prayer of Mending (or The Holy Frisbee) and Prayer of Healing (brutally cut down in its prime after The Great Priest Nerf of Patch 3.2). You can happily raid/group heal as Discipline by shielding everything in sight and tossing around renews and flash heals. You can happily Main Tank heal as Holy with your Guardian Spirit on standby and tossing out renews and FH/GH as required. But if you’ve got the choice of putting Holy on the raid and Disc on the Tank, then it makes more sense to do so, all other things being equal.

No, my priestess is not an amazing fan of The Great Priest Nerf (aka Patch 3.2).

Pewpewlazerz puts it in better terms than I could. I think Disc priests really got cut worse than Holy in the patch because they got heavy nerfs to Penance (via 2 seconds of cooldown) and to Prayer of Healing (on the order of about 20-25% healing done). Disc is probably slightly more effective at 5-mans, but they really are not designed to raid heal. I just love Holy though because I can do both, even though I usually raid heal in my guild raids. Guardian Spirit and the Spirit of Redemption have saved more runs than you could possible imagine!

Thanks for reading the blog if you continue…I’m really not very well established at it so that’s whay you’d never come across it.

Thank you kindly🙂 And, yes, as I say, some of them are spanners but at least they’re nice about it. And it’s nice to have a pool of people, albeit a relatively small one at the moment, to invite rather than plumbing the depths of PUGs.

Never say never … “I could dual-spec shadow of course but I’m kind of committed to standing at the back in a sissy robe.” See I have a worse situation. I started a druid, decided he was going to be resto/feral tank … and called him Furryferal. Then I changed my mind and decided I didn’t like tanking. No trouble. resto/feral DPS … Then, in my mighty and glorious wisdom (or lack thereof), I decided that at 80 I wanted to be able to farm leather. Lots of leather. So I … well, I respecced. To resto/boom.

Great. 10 points to the noob. This is a level 80 toon that doesn’t have a SINGLE point in the feral tree over both specs … called FurryFERAL.

Tamarind is a holy priest (in World of Warcraft; in real life he is something different) which means - according to some of the folks he has PUGed with - he stands at the back in a sissy robe and does nothing.